


warm blood

by hopeheavy



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Minor Violence, Physical Abuse, Spoilers, V Route Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 23:52:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12178938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeheavy/pseuds/hopeheavy
Summary: “Then I’ll tell you my real name first."(If she were kinder she would stop him - her throat constricts at the thought, she hovers agonizingly in front of him, hands crossed just-so. If she weren't so selfish she would turn tail and leave.)"It’s Kim Jihyun."(But she's been swimming in her own darkness for so long.)"But everyone calls me V.”(She wants to be infected with his light.)





	warm blood

**Author's Note:**

> this is literally just a rika app but we'll call it a character study because what else do i ever use my ao3 for except to post these every year or two! but anyway, the v route ruined me. i might actually? actually? write some legitimate fic of it so if anyone has anything they'd like to request let me know! maybe i'll actually do some jumin/v since that's my actual mysmes ship, not that you'd know from my ao3! anyway, rika's character is so interesting and tragic to me, i wanted to write through my understanding of her as best i could. i hope you enjoy!

What forever lashes Rika to her childhood is:

Fear.

It’s the first she tastes of it; fear becomes her. Shaking fists. Bleary eyes. She is a child with no control - she cries too much and too quickly, folds in on herself at the first sign of trouble.

(How else does one cope? Mother, Father, gone - sham of a family pieced together,

Pseudo-mother’s voice a permanent echo: I regret adopting you.

_Regret?_

Why did you...?)

She learns so quickly, so young, that the world has no patience for weakness. The world cannot comprehend darkness, and it doesn’t want to. What do her tears earn her? Swift pointed fingers. Jeers and laughs. Certainly not sympathy, certainly not  _help_ , not  _love_  -

Rika is too soft. Too easily bruised. Her spine bends at the slightest inclination.

It takes years, it takes  _practice_ , for resolution to slink through and coil around her. For her skin to thicken, for her smile to settle, unshakeable.

And how her efforts are rewarded: her pretense gains her everything she’d so desperately longed for. Friends. Confidence. A face in the mirror she can almost, almost stand to look at.

But it isn’t real.

No matter how long it stays fixed, when she’s alone her smile slips. She thinks herself barely a shell of a person; pretty enough on the outside, able to draw them in with sweet laughs and yet sweeter words, but hollow within. Nothing more than a specter among the living.

(For so long she thinks: perhaps that’s just how people like me are meant to survive.

She exudes what little light she has and makes the world believe that’s who she is.)

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

She wants to gnash out the sickness within her: purify, sanctify, strip it away and drown in a flood of radiant energy.

(Maybe that’s why.)

The photos on the wall are so  _warm_  - how much of that life-heat, how much heavenly light before it sinks into her, too? How much can she take into herself from the sight alone? - and she can’t quite tear herself away. What a stark disparity, devilish girl standing beneath these images of love and light forever captured, imprinted on glossy paper.

When the photographer approaches her (you've been standing here for an hour, I had to say hello, he says) Rika knows at once he's the same.

Same light. Same love. All encompassing. His eyes go on forever where hers fall flat without deliberate attention.

He asks her for her name: “It's... Rika.”

“Is that your real name?”

She laughs, quick, a splitting of nerves. “...No.”

And she doesn’t  _have_  to tell him, not when she lies to the world at every passing second, with her smile and her peeling laughter and her idyllic curls - but she does, anyway. Rika has perfected the art of being what she is not. Two minutes in, and he’s so genuine. And he’s so sincere. And she is suffocating.

“Then I’ll tell you my real name first."

(If she were kinder she would stop him - her throat constricts at the thought, she hovers agonizingly in front of him, hands crossed just-so. If she weren't so selfish she would turn tail and leave.)

"It’s Kim Jihyun."

(But she's been swimming in her own darkness for so long.)

"But everyone calls me V.”

(She wants to be infected with his light.)

And with all her practiced sweetness, contrived from late nights in front of the mirror, swiping away tear tracks and replacing them with artful expression: Rika smiles.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

They fall in love so quickly, so dazzlingly -

Rika slips into her role beside V with natural, effortless rhythm. They look good together, people say. They’re perfect for each other. And in some ways, those people are right: they are each the other’s equal opposite. For all of V’s goodness, for all of V’s divine light, Rika is filled to the brim with wretchedness.

But she can forget about herself, at first. With V, she creates something beautiful. They shape the RFA out of nothing - a charity association to help the poor by bringing people of all sorts together to raise funds. It’s work that breathes new life into her, it’s work that makes her think

Maybe she isn’t so hopeless after all.

With the organization comes a sense of family she’s never known. There’s V (fiance, now, she declares, flashing a thin band along her finger) of course, and Yoosung - who calls her cousin, so kindly, though there’s no blood between them. V’s childhood friend Jumin fast becomes hers as well; his assistant Jaehee comes on board. There’s Zen, the musical actor she’d so admired.

And - Seven. Luciel. Saeyoung. That little secret is the first of many she and V will keep.

Together, they host parties, and they raise funds, and their organization grows from an idea into a fully realized charity group - one that delivers on its promises.

It would be enough to make anyone happy. Fulfilled. At peace.

But Rika isn’t just anyone.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

She imagines a thousand ways in which he will leave her.

In which he’ll cleave away the part of him she holds, in which she won’t be able to survive if he goes, in which he betrays her, again and again and again -

It seems inevitable.

(He tells her she’s wrong, and his eyes are so bright and so kind and so sincere, she always sinks into them. Sometimes it’s so easy it makes her blood boil, the way he smoothes her over and quiets her with a brush of his hand, brush of his lips. I’ll always be with you, he says.

_liar._

I’ll never abandon you, he says.

_liar._

I'll love all of you, even your darkness, he says.

 _liar liar LIAR._ )

He thinks of her as something untouchable. A piece of art, a flawless photograph that he can never truly replicate. He finds her suffering beautiful. She thinks she likes that. She doesn’t want to be Rika, fragmented being, so imperfect, so hideous. She wants to be what V sees her as, this brilliant thing.

But she can’t.

“I feel so twisted inside.”

It isn’t the first time her words make him quake; his eyes cloud over, the way they do when he’s worried, or sad. He hates when she says things like this out of the blue. Her fingers turn in his shirt, find purchase and drag like she might pull him under with her. She wants to rake them through his hair, make him listen.

She smiles. Saccharine.

“Tell me… Don’t you feel twisted too?”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

He wants her to change.

He wants her to kill her devil.

(V doesn’t know. V doesn’t  _understand_. She cannot destroy her darkness without destroying herself.)

And he stands so loving so willing so adamantly stubbornly INFURIATINGLY ready to hurt for her, to bleed for her, let her hands shape him and then break him back down into nothing. And she will, oh, she will. What was he before her? What was she before him? They were both empty souls, reaching out with hungry hands for anything that would take them and fill them. They became the other’s salvation. Who better to become each other’s damnation? There’s a screeching within her that will not die, it says: V says he loves you, V says he will never leave you no matter what you do. Make him prove it.

In the moment, she is nothing but the thick of her rage. Or sadness. Or grief. Or desperation. She doesn’t know what it is that drives her, only that it is all-consuming.

In the moment, her world flashes red.

In the aftermath, when she is shaking and crying and  _oh god,_  his eyes, his eyes, his eyes -

She tells herself not to regret it.

(You can’t ask his forgiveness this time, Rika.

You know he would give it.

Doesn’t that make you  _sick?_ )

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

What is it that finally pulls her away from the Rika they’d all once known:

Is it Sally dying - just a dog, maybe, but the fault for her death lies squarely on Rika’s shoulders - and all her grief? Is it the therapy that only furthers her frustration, her guilt, her unwillingness to rid herself of what makes her  _Rika?_  Is it the RFA, something that was supposed to bring her joy, bring her fulfillment - but instead made her feel helpless? Is it V’s unfailing light - so bright it’s blinding, so bright she feels herself choking in the wake of it?

Maybe it’s everything and nothing. Maybe she was never meant to be happy. Maybe she could never be what she so desperately wanted to be.

(Rika is a monstrous creature to the end. She cannot live without satisfying her own need for misery.

Who was she to think she could ever pretend otherwise?)

All she knows is

One day

It’s all too much and it isn’t - never will be - enough.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Mint Eye exists in accordance to her need. It’s meant to be everything RFA couldn’t be.

There’s so much suffering. The world opens up its mouth and eats people like her alive, people who never had a chance, people that society will always ostracize, demonize. She could never be understood. She knows she isn’t the only one.

(Who else but she could open their arms wide enough to accept them all? Who else could take their dark hearts and breathe new life into them? Who else could realize they didn’t need to be cured, their pain and their devils blotted comfortably away - but loved fully for all they are?

Who but Rika could become their Savior?)

V wipes all trace of her from her own organization. V, she hears, spins such tall tales about where she’s gone off to.

A watery grave, apparently.

Taking her own life? V couldn’t kill the darkness within her, so he made her kill herself?

It makes her want to laugh. It makes her want to scream.

But she takes his imposed exile and slips into it like a summer's dress; if he wants her to be  _dead_ then she will be  _reborn_. She will make her own heavenly paradise.

And all the world’s sinners are invited.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

She sheds her skin again, and -

Now she is the Savior, and her Believers look at her with awe, with adoration, with  _happiness._

(See, V? We can live so sweetly with our darkness.

We have to.)

Perhaps it’s for the best that she’s been separated from her beloved RFA (oh, she misses them all; Yoosung, Jumin, Seven, Zen, Jaehee…) for she’s well aware that they wouldn’t understand her vision. Her purpose. To them, she was bright beautiful perfect Rika, with her idyllic smile and unfaltering kindness. They loved their Rika. They treasured her.

She was only a sliver of the real thing.

Would she be able to stomach them cursing the true her? To see them turn away from her, their faces tinted with disgust…?

No. No.

Maybe she isn't giving them enough credit; maybe they would understand -

(But it’s not the time for that. There’s work to be done.)

She and her newfound Believers all live in bliss, for a time. Rika passes out euphoric elixir and righteous fear in equal shares, because she  _knows_ what they need to survive. Her Believers devils must be fed for them to be happy, and that requires a healthy dose of fear. And when that becomes too much, the elixir falls down their throats to coat their worries, to soothe them. It is she that orchestrates their desperately needed balance.

To the rest of the world, maybe, her methods would seem like madness. The world would take them, would cleanse them, would purify them, would strip away the very essence of them and mold them into something acceptable.

She won’t allow that.

Rika thinks she might be content with her little piece of paradise.

(Until she isn’t.

Until things have to change.)

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

That girl…  _ha._

She has trouble deciding whether she’s overflowing with light or swathed in hidden darkness. Maybe she’s both. Maybe she’s just. like. Rika.

(And it’s intoxicating, that possibility. That fresh breath of comprehension.

_You understand me, don’t you?_

_Can’t you?_

_Please please please please -_ )

It’s her light that gives Rika pause; it’s so familiar, but so different from V’s. If she could be free of him, free of his influence, free of his suffocating pure perfect too sweet love - could this girl give her something better? Something with room to breathe, something that doesn’t want to lay waste to the ugliest parts of her.

What a beautiful, kind, good girl. Ray was entirely right.

Rika says: “Maybe I could love you even more than I loved V.”

But the girl pulls away.

And it’s like V is taking from her  _again_  -

Why is his light so brilliant? Why does it draw them all in - even her, even now? Why can’t Rika have one thing for herself without having to see him shine? Why won’t this girl see how he’ll hurt her?

( _Like he hurt me._ )

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 _It wasn't love, it was obsession_ , he says.

Like it’s that simple. Like she should accept it. Like she could ever ever ever believe it -

How can he  _lie_  to her - how can he be so cruel? Isn’t it against the nature of the sun to shed darkness? Isn’t it unnatural for it to destroy the lives it creates?

(You said you love me! You said you love me you love me YOU LOVE ME)

“Obsession? You never loved me?”

She can’t stop her voice from hitching; when she screams, her fingernails tear at her dress, her hair, find purchase on any part of her and slip in. Can she hold herself together this way? Can she exist without V’s light? And his eyes - they’ve never looked at her like that. So far away, as though she’s untouchable, as though she’s already gone, as though he…

“So you mean… No one has ever loved me? No one has ever loved me since my birth?”

He burns through her: Rika’s breath catches, stutters, exits in wracking sobs that shake her thin body. How could he leave her? How could he break every last promise? Hadn’t he said… he’d always be there, no matter what she did? No matter how she acted? Hadn’t she warned him - her devil would not lie in slumber forever?

(She wants to take her turn begging;

Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.

A shadow cannot live without its sun.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

She's become used to life without V, but without  _her_ , Rika’s days spin endlessly on -

Miserable. She feels that residual itch begin to build.

Ray - oh,  _Saeran_. Just how long does V expect to keep that little secret, one of a million, tucked away nice and neat and private? Just how long does he want to keep Seven ignorant of the fact that his brother is so, so close? - is always crying. He’d liked her, too - poor boy. So sweet, so sensitive, so viciously hurt. Only Rika knows how to pacify him, to bring him some semblance of meaning and happiness. Had he been given recklessly to the world, he wouldn’t have survived.

If only they knew the good she’d done, they would understand. They would praise her. They would welcome her back - wouldn’t they?

Well.

There’s only one way to find out.

( _V._

You should have known better.)

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

She cannot fathom losing - this battle, if you could call it that, the RFA, the Mint Eye,  _everything!_  - until the repercussions are falling without pause, without mercy.

Rika will fall with them. Everything can fall.

It doesn’t matter.

Without her sun - without V, without that girl, without  _light_  in her world - nothing matters.

V stands before her like a stranger, like he’s a million miles away but still close enough to touch. Can she really not reach him anymore? Does he no longer feel her pain? Is he really… not her sun? He’s so  _heartless_ , so merciless, so awful! He’d let her wither away and die and not bat an eye, so long as he has his happy ending, so long as he has that girl by his side - why couldn’t they have just… all had each other? All been happy together? Why is she the one pushed away?

It’s too much.

It’s too  _much._

And then her hands are red.

Rika lets the knife fall to the ground; she staggers back as V crumples over, her name on his lips but it's not like it was before and -

no no no no no NO NO NO NO

She didn’t mean to,  _god_ , she didn’t mean to, and he can’t die - no, she can’t have killed him, right? V can’t die, right? His light can’t leave her - right? Not like this. Not like this.

She’s dialed the number before she realizes what she’s doing, phone to her ear, she’s got to  _tell her_ and maybe more than that, she’s got to hear her voice, just for a moment.

(What... what does that girl hear, on the other line? The hysterics, the screaming, of course - but can she hear Rika’s regret? Does she know she didn’t mean to? Does she… Does she…)

“Ha… V can’t die.”

The girl’s silence is more telling than anything.

“I didn’t stab him that deep.”

_Click._

 

 

* * *

 

 

If she pulled the pieces together of the last few months, years, however long - would she find the thread where things began to unravel? Had she clipped it, tied it up tight, would things have turned out differently?

Or was it always meant to fall apart so spectacularly? Did she ever really have a chance, or was she always lost? Always beyond repair?

Oh, she’s relieved when V wakes up. It’s so palpable, the way it washes through her. And along with it, the regret. The shame. It all comes and goes in waves, and all that’s left is her pleas: just let me be with you, both of you. I'll be good. I won't do anything. I won't say anything. Just let me stand in your light.

They fall on deaf ears.

That’s fine. That’s alright. Maybe all of this was meant to be - V and the rest turning from her, moving on with their lives, finding their own happiness without her.

Maybe she was not destined for her own happiness. For her own love. For anything other than remaining this despicable creature only at home in the dark.

It’s only right, then.

That her light was lost.


End file.
